Happy Yoga

That last post is a biggie for me. I kind of want to hire someone to walk around with a frying pan in hand, following everywhere I go and clonking me over the head with it every time I stray from recognizing that my concepts may be creating my experience of the world and I could be even happier if I let them go. I am chronically getting my undies in a bundle, feeling wronged and slighted and unloved. It's really not serving me well at all. But I have such a hard time remembering that how I feel is to a large extent up to me and the stories I'm telling myself about what I am like and what other people are like are all just my stories and (worse) are quite likely self-fulfilling prophesies (or at least make me feel like shit when I tell them to myself over and over). Luckily, I have friends who are good at recognizing and pointing out my mental rigidness for me, and this book, "Happy Yoga," by Steve Ross, was a nice, latest kick in the pants. Pulling out the rest of these excerpts makes me realize how cheesy and flower-childy the book sounds, but when I set that aside and really pay attention to the ideas communicated, it gives me so many ways to make my inner landscape a better place to be.

Be love. It's that simple. If you can, let go of wanting approval. Let go of wanting love. Give yourself some approval, give yourself some love. You may realize that this is enough. If you can let go of resisting who you are, and allow yourself to be, exactly as you are, you might feel a tremendous relief. That is loving yourself. 

We're all the same, going through the same stuff. Everybody has a point of view with opinions attached to it. Instead of cursing people who don't agree with you, you can bless them with love and compassion as they are. 

Any relationship has a better chance of surviving if you're not in it to get your desires filled, but to simply be loving. True love wants nothing except to love. 

Expectation will always be disappointed. Why not let the people in your life...be as they are? They have to go through whatever their life demands of them. Can you love them without wanting them to be anything other than what they are? Can you love them without controlling them? 

Becoming aware of your stories about the future and the past, and realizing these stories are not ultimately who you are, that in fact they're limiting, is vastly liberating. To be free to perceive this moment with clarity, you must be free of future and past identifications (or at least aware of them). Do you have stories about yourself or your experience that you tell yourself and others over and over? What do these stories justify? What if your stories were fiction and everyone knew it, including you? What if you couldn't use them anymore to justify your identity? Then who would you be? 

Some yogis say that the world is a training ground, that it's riddled with conflict for a good reason: to push you toward that which is beyond all duality. The chaos of the world can indeed be a great motivator for cultivating inner peace. And your own inner peace can be a great inspiration for the rest of the world.

At some places in philosophical tomes like this, I fall off the wagon. It usually happens at a point such as this one, when the world's strife is framed as something that has a reason and purpose by grand design. It's too traditionally religious for me to swallow. Or something. And this in particular doesn't make much sense to me. It seems to contradict the previous message about not telling stories, about accepting everything as it is. I don't know that I'll ever see truth in ideas about everything happening for a reason. I oscillate between thinking that's just something people tell themselves to comfort themselves because they're too scared to face the random meaninglessness of life and then wondering if I'm just not evolved enough to fully grasp it. And then back again. Rinse and repeat. But I do really support the last sentence of that excerpt, as it's a restatement of "Be the change you wish to see in the world," and that remains the singular foundation I trust enough to build the rest of my life upon.

Finally, here is a story from the book that is attributed to "Achaan Chah Subato, Theravadan meditation master." (That needed quotes because there are so many words in it I don't understand, and it seemed arrogant to just rattle it off like I talk about Achaan Chah Subato, Theravadan meditation master, all the time.) This is as key to me as the excerpt in my previous post. I feel like if I could manage to integrate these two things into my life on a daily basis, really believe them and remember them and apply them to everything I do, 99% of the things I worry or feel sad about would melt away.

One day, some people came to the master and asked: "How can you be so happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness, and death?" The master held up a glass and said: "Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly."

Embrace not knowing

Do some mental housekeeping. Any concepts lurking in there? Remember, a concept is a framework of thoughts and beliefs not based on your own personal experience. Make a list of your concepts about the world (everyone is greedy, so-and-so is a good/bad person, Iceland is a cold, icy place, and so on). Then ask yourself, "Is that my experience? How do I know for sure?" If it is your experience, recognize that this concept may be creating your experience of the world. Do you like it, or do you want to let it go? If you're not absolutely certain, let go of assuming you know something that you don't. Embrace not knowing.

- Steve Ross, from "Happy Yoga"

Celebration!

Last weekend (though I'm late in posting) was one of celebration. First, up to Keystone...

...for a friend's bachelorette party.

And then back down from the mountains for my niece Evi's six birthday.

Her party was at a pottery painting place, and Owen was really into mixing the colors, to the point where he might as well have just gotten gray and gotten it over with.

And my sister is this brilliant kind of creative mom that puts M&Ms in the bottom of ice cream cones, and then a cupcake in the top, a tiny cupcake upside down on top of that, and then frosts the whole thing to make it look like an ice cream cone. Because of my evil feelings about sugar, I can't really recommend the treats below, but they sure are pretty.

Happy times!

Become a courageous human being

Become a courageous human being and do the best you can under any and all circumstances in this imperfect and troublesome world.

Be brave enough to live and be brave enough to die, knowing that when the Grim Reaper comes, you did the best you could and that the world is better for your having lived.

- Joseph Lewis, An Atheist Manifesto

Rich

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone.

- Henry David Thoreau

Rule Number Six

Rule #1: See rule #6.
Rule #2: See rule #6.
Rule #3: See rule #6.
Rule #4: See rule #6.
Rule #5: See rule #6.
Rule #6: Don't take yourself so damn seriously.

(Stolen from William Powers in Twelve By Twelve, who stole it from a friend of his.)

Then Again

I recently read Diane Keaton's sweet memoir, Then Again, which interweaves her own life memories with an examination of her relationship with her mother, Dorothy. I especially loved and agree with this part, when she thinks about how Alzheimer's turned her mother into someone nearly unrecognizable to those who loved her:

But then, am I recognizable as the same person I was when Annie Hall opened almost thirty-five years ago? I remember people coming up to me on the street, saying, "Don't ever change. Just don't ever change." Even Mom once said, "Don't grow old, Diane." I didn't like those words then, and I don't like them now. The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn't bring happiness.